Posts by kmackrill1

I just pulled up Add New under Posts. I did it with a purpose because I was focused. See how I said was? That’s because I already lost my train of thought.

It’s because I’m tired. We worked hard last night, got a lot of work stuff done – logos and website updates and marketing campaigns on their feet and Jud trained me on some stuff. I was going to do some laundry after that, but then I didn’t because Nightline was on and I wanted to steal nachos off of Jud’s plate while we watched. They promised Nate Berkus would tell us how to renovate our kitchen without spending a lot of money. Instead they told us that we should buy Nate Berkus stuff from Target and not keep a lot of stuff around unless it ‘tells our story.’ I was disappointed. Nightline also told me about how insane people are trying to get Flaming Hot Cheetos banned from schools. It would be fine if we were talking about school lunches or school vending machines, but these peeps want to tell people that their children can’t bring them in their lunches and consume them in the cafeteria. The world is a strange, horrible place sometimes. If we spent half the energy into delivering ANY food to kids who are hungry on this orb that we spend fretting about what we’re giving to the children who are eating too much (sodium, carbs, sugar, meat or whatever the next fad shall be) we’d have half as many hungry kids on the earth.

I have a crazy hungry kid in my house today. He’s eating everything. He had two breakfasts. He ate two morning snacks. Then there was lunch. Three o-clock snack was two Rise & Shine Smoothies (do you know about these? They are the best (BEST!) in the smoothie world. Here’s what you do. Take equal parts vanilla yogurt and orange juice (I only drink Simply orange because it is so stinking yum. You can squeeze your own organic oranges. Go ahead. We’ll wait….), one frozen banana (or not frozen, whatevs. I pop them in the freezer after peeling them when they get a bit too ripe), and some berries (whatever you have – straw, blue, rasp, black). Blend.), toast and applesauce.

The baby’s crying now. Whatever I wanted to say will have to wait. Go make that smoothie now. You can thank me later, if you remember.

Gideon’s Awana book has a cd that came with it. The cd is great for helping him memorize verses (he’s pretty good at memorizing anyway, but just imagine listening to it EVERY TIME you go somewhere in the van! How awesome would that be? The most extreme awesome, if you are a child who wants to memorize 55 tracks of people talking to kids. I wish there wasn’t copyright issues, because I would totally burn these for you and send them out. You would love me so much). He asks to listen to it every time we get in the car. As soon as I turn the engine over, he starts the request. He doesn’t realize that it’s already on from the last time we drove the car. Who needs to ask?!

One of the tracks talks about how we don’t have to be afraid of anything. Fear is put into the context of a big game a kid’s team is about to play where the other kids are huge and scary. Gideon has taken this particular track to heart and regularly announces that he is not scared of anything. He’s not afraid of thunderstorms. He’s not afraid of crashing. He’s not afraid of the dark. He’s not afraid of shadows. The list is LONG. It’s long because it includes everything. He’s not afraid of everything.

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A few weeks ago the oldest two wouldn’t stop talking about snakes. I’m Indiana Jones levels of terrified of the things. Scratch that. Indiana Jones keeps snakes as friendly pets compared to my fear of the things. The kids wouldn’t drop it, in spite of my protests, which, in their defense, was initially peppered with nervous laughter, but since they are children they don’t fully comprehend the emotional terror in my throat. They just kept hitting the same note. So I walked out of the front door [calm down, cps. my mother was over]. They rushed to the front window where they could see me sitting on the front step. Gideon was giggling and telling me to come back in. Piper was making sssssssssssss noises. Classic. They love reminiscing about that moment.

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Last week I sat down at the desk in the family room to get some work done while Greer napped. There are two vents that return air into the basement directly next to where I sit in my awesome Herman Miller Mirra Loaded Chair. Am I afraid of anything? Is there anything that makes me scared? Well, yes, of course, there’s snakes. And then there are these things too…

I haven’t been writing much lately and there are multiple reasons behind it all. Don’t worry, none of those reasons include pregnancy or moving to Nashville or any other life altering seeeekrits. My days have been FULL. I remember once listening to a mother of a lot of children telling me about another mother with a lot of children who said that once she leaves her bedroom in the morning, she doesn’t make it back into that room until the evening. I’m not in that place, but in the interest of full disclosure, the changing table is currently in my bedroom. I’m in there plenty.

The baby is in full-on-death-mode. I’ve found her chewing on cords, trying to make out with an electrical socket, attempting to sit at the top of the stairs where there isn’t actually any floor, climbing on top of toys in the crib in a feeble and ill advised plan of escape, leaning out of her high chair towards the floor while I put the tray down on the counter, shoving all kinds of things that could potentially choke her into her pie hole (none of them were pie. Sad face). She is the greatest reason for my full-tiltedness. She’ll be eight months old next week. Goodnight.

Gideon read his very first book all by himself today. It was about a rat who’s wearing a tan hat. There is also a cat. I think you can figure out what happened.

He got a sticker and tons of self confidence. That’s how you get proper self-esteem, by the way. You do amazing things, things you didn’t think you could do, things that look like a giant, St Helens sized obstacle and then you tighten your crampons and you go. When you’re standing on a precipice and you think you aren’t going to make the summit and then you do it. You summit. Like a boss. That’s when you know the next time that book or that volcano is taunting you with your possible inability, you remember that last Kilauea whose steam you felt but triumphed over and you think, “be quiet fear. This is doable.” You don’t build real confidence any other way.

Piper used scissors to make ANOTHER snowflake this morning. It is as if she is summoning the cold from December and wishing it upon our day. She’ll care when it arrives (this weekend, maybe?) and she can’t wear those shiny pink sandals anymore. In the meantime, she’s rocking out My Little Pony episodes and taking names from anybody who wants to mess with Twilight Sparkle. The show bleeds over into her play every day, but thankfully not so much in the details because I am guessing its writers drop acid and then beat their heads against a wall when they get a creative block and need more material to fill those excruciating 22 minutes of awful.

We’re knocking out work as fast as we can without compromising quality. It’s good and exhausting. It’s hard to know what comes first, the exhaustion or the sinus infection and mastitis. Do I wear my body down with lack of sleep and then get sick or does the sickness make me crazy enough not to sleep. Okay, yeah, it’s the first one. Regardless, there’s plenty more to do, which will hopefully get crossed off tonight while the Pres and the dude who wants his job square off tonight. I hope they throw in some jazz hands or that the moderator’s chairs turn around or something so that the rest of ‘merica will watch. Maybe they’ll parade out overweight southerners in pageant clothes instead. I say go where your heart leads politicians. Make us proud.

You began the 7th month of your life without any teeth, not really moving and wonderfully content. Upon completion of your seventh month yesterday you had four teeth through your gums, climbed the stairs a few times as you crawled as fast as you can muster after your siblings and screeched about the idea of being placed inside a crib or pack-n-play instead of being allowed to free range with the older two. At 5:30 this morning when I heard you crying to eat, I found you standing up in the pack-n-play, clutching the side while giant tears rolled down your cheeks. You are so much older than I want you to be.

Your chub is thinning out, although you are still the chubbiest one to date in our house. I love your rolls. I love squishing my face into your chubby tummy and hearing your deep laugh. I love blowing your short, thin, wispy hair and watching your bright blue eyes blink in excitement over it. I love watching you watch your brother and seeing you light up. I love how you smile at just about everybody, provided you are not amazingly tired and the person you are staring at is not sunburned.

I love that you love the stroller. I love that you don’t fuss too much when I force you to upend your nap schedule on account of preschool hours and church activities and my absent-mindedness about the time. I love that you hug and snuggle. I love that your feet are sweaty. I love that you barely cared about the cold you caught last week, except when it made you choke in the middle of the night.